Tuesday night at M Bar in Northwest Portland, there was a listening party for the Young Immortals’ song “The Fever” being played on the Local Music Spotlight show on KINK radio. In case you didn’t know, or if you just stumbled across this blog, I recorded and produced the Young Immortals’ new CD (well, CO-produced it, to be completely truthful; the album was very much a collaboration between Jake and me), and played many of the instruments on it.

It’s very exciting to hear yourself on the radio, but then the very next day, I found out that “The Fever” was chosen by Starbucks to be put on a new compilation CD, to be released in April! But don’t take my word for it; here’s the press release.

Last night, Crystin Byrd, Kelly and I went to see Chad Bault play at Mississippi Studios. Chad’s a great songwriter who moved to Portland from Yakima, Washington about five years ago. Since then, he’s taken the town by storm and played with some pretty big-name people here. He and his wife will be moving back to Yakima soon, so last night’s show was quite possibly the last time he’ll be playing in Portland for a while. This town will not be the same without him.

Wednesday night I went to see a lecture at Powell’s called, “Your Brain On Music.” It was extremely interesting, and I bought the book. The most interesting thing that he mentioned in passing was that although it’s been known for years that music affects many different parts of the brain simultaneously, scientists have now proven that music affects the ‘reward centers’ in the brain, in the same way that drugs, alcohol, junk food, and sex do. It made me wonder if people could become ‘music addicts’, in addition to all the other types of addicts. Maybe there’s something to the phrase, ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ after all. Can’t wait to read the book.

So yeah. . .definitely a very exciting and memorable week for music-related stuff.